The Degeneration of the Nation
The Degeneration of the Nation (Part 3): A Moral Lecture - What Does Culture Demand of Us?
What is the difference between the decadence of the late 19th century and the decline of the early 21st century? Why does our longer life expectancy allow us to conduct ourselves creatively in a completely different way than in the past? Is our generation truly special, or is it just dragging on for too long? And how is Brenner, the archetype of the professional generational rebuker, to blame for the bitter dispute in Israel between Bibi and anti-Bibi? Here is the solution to all the problems of our generation - through one additional generation
By: For the Perplexed of the Generation
Human Society: The Human Pendulum  (Source)
From time to time, I read contemporary texts that aim to solve some problem in humanity - that is, they focus on the average person and try to help them - and an anachronistic feeling gradually takes over the reading. In our time, those who seriously try to fix something "in humanity" cannot help but evoke a smile, for it seems that every sensible person has already understood - "humanity" is simply idiotic. There's no point in dealing with it. "Society", another desirable target for fixers, is composed of just a very wide variety of stupidities - and there's no reason to bother with it. "The public" is just an eclectic collection of personality problems and incurable neurological weaknesses - generation comes and generation goes, and foolishness stands forever. They are always a herd of something quite moronic, hopefully not too murderous. They never learn. And if they do learn something the hard way, for example in war, a generation or two after them already forgets. To the chagrin of both individualists and collectivists - neither the individual nor the public are truly learning systems. So what is the only system in our world that does learn, and that carries all progress on its back? Culture.

Politics, for example, is not a true learning system. Politics has always been and will always be a collection of idiotisms (usually with good intentions, or at least with some idiot+ism), spread by useful fools, led by imbeciles, followed by a very long line of dimwits. Ben-Gurion was a product of an entire generation, not of individual excellence, and that generation learned the hard way - the collapse of Europe and the Holocaust. The generation after him was already more foolish, and the generation after that (the current one) has already returned to the average historical level of stupidity. Therefore, it is always better to reduce the scope of politics, just as it is better to reduce the scope of the state (in fact, the reason it is better to reduce the scope of the state is precisely because it is better to reduce the scope of politics, and not some pure economic reason: the economic problem stems from general stupidity).

Will salvation come from the individual? The individual is also worthless, contrary to Nietzschean thinking, and we wouldn't remember Nietzsche himself - if not for his books. Only a valuable contribution to culture - will be remembered. And in fact, the multitude of fools understands this, and crowds in masses at the gates of culture, trying to contribute its hollow contribution, and to corrupt even it with its stupidity, as it tries to do to the academic ivory tower (what is called - education for all). Hence the politicization that culture undergoes. But Israel is not forsaken - all those who make noise in today's cultural field, due to their engagement with current affairs, are destined to be quickly forgotten.

Culture has a non-democratic filtering mechanism - but futuristic. Therefore, it works in a learning manner. Culture is the central learning system of the human species, and in general on Earth (science is part of culture, of course), and in fact the only effective learning system known to us in the universe. The brain is not particularly effective or successful, nor is evolution, and it wasn't the appearance of the brain that was the great revolution - but the appearance of culture. The only thing that does progress, and affects positively (somehow, partially, and ultimately) even politics and society and the individual human, is culture. And this is also ultimately the thing that interests us in (surprise!) "past cultures". No one remembers the petty politics there, but only the great culture. Therefore, it probably wouldn't have been so interesting to know what was there in the hundreds of thousands of years of primitive human society, just as the politics in a herd of monkeys are not interesting. The real interest begins with the birth of culture, and from some pioneering leap it made about ten thousand years ago, as an order of magnitude (the cultural revolution - known as the Neolithic Revolution). The only reason for the success of the human species is culture, not the wisdom of the individual (who is smarter than a monkey by less than one order of magnitude).

So, what will become of culture? Culture is a long-term learning system, and therefore what it needs is patience. We can relax - the fools will not affect culture, nor will politics. It may be that culture today is slower in its ability to filter out noise (there's simply much more noise - that is, fools - in its domain). But the future is an excellent noise filter. Fools can shout until tomorrow - no one will hear them in the future. No one will be interested in their banal pains, or in their painful banality. Culture does not appreciate conformism, only politics does. The solution is very simple and as old as human culture itself: you just need to wait a generation. This is always the problem - waiting a generation. For the individual, this is an almost impossible, cruel, heavy demand beyond their ability to bear - but for culture, it's a minimum requirement.

Hence the eternal cultural illusion, beloved by self-proclaimed cultural figures, as if in the past there was a higher concentration of talents and masterpieces, while the present is miserable and deprived in comparison - despite its extreme implausibility (it's as old as the world). It's not that fewer masterpieces are being written today (probably more!), but that you haven't heard about essential developments too close to the present, because sometimes it takes even hundreds of years for such recognition (the Zohar [Translator's note: a foundational text of Jewish mysticism], for example, still hasn't received the global recognition it deserves!). Your chance of hearing about the greats of your generation is small - because only the learning of the future will mark them in retrospect as great. And the deeper the new direction (the innovation) - the longer it will take to mark it, and to filter it out of thousands of less deep and less long-term directions, but more politically powerful for their time - and certainly (in our days) noisier. The face of the generation is like the face of a barking dog - and only in retrospect are the cats of the generation revealed, who were hidden in their homes and surroundings.

So is culture progressing more slowly than in the past, because of the enormous noise, which takes time to subside? Possibly, but not at all certain. Because it's possible that what's important for culture is only the dialogue between the exceptional individuals who truly advance it, who converse high above the herd of masses of fools humming with their croaks up to the heart of the heavens. Therefore, in this view, the question is ultimately a question of communication - the ability of true cultural figures to identify the voices of the few other cultural figures, if not in this generation then at least in the previous one. And here, it's possible that the internet has actually contributed positively.

But the learning truth is that even this understanding is less important, and there is wild exaggeration in the importance of dialogue for the progress of learning, stemming from the dominance of the idea of language and communication in our time, which create a temporary bias (that is: only of our time) in favor of linguistic analogies and metaphors. It's true that there is a special enrichment in knowing the cultural figures of your generation, and this probably happens less than in the past, but at the level of the talented individual who contributes to culture, it may be less important than it seems. It's true that the psychological burden of cultural loneliness of the individual is growing in the current situation, where the politics of culture is controlled by impostors, and therefore there is no longer a cultural center but only disconnected islands. But culture grows not only from dialogue, but simply from self-learning. And today the conditions for self-learning, in every respect, are much better than in the past. The internet opens up treasures of scientific knowledge for us, which flows faster than other parts of culture, and has not yet been corrupted - and this is perhaps the most important cultural knowledge for our technological era.

The islands of culture can react in an isolated way to their time. Not to the culture of their time, hidden from them, and will only be revealed in the future, because of the cultural uproar - but the ability to dialogue with time is more important than the ability to dialogue with the culture of the time. One can learn from time itself! And time itself is progressing faster and faster, towards the future, and therefore learning itself is accelerated. Therefore, for those willing to give up recognition, we live in paradise, while for proud cultural figures - our era is life in hell. Therefore, giving up on the self is the order of the day in current culture, if there is still any meaning to this term - current culture - when culture ceases to function in the present tense, and becomes culture in the future only.

That is: Culture becomes futuristic culture. A culture that exists entirely and only in the mirror of the future, and only from within the future will it be possible to see it as culture, that is, as a symphony (multi-voiced, but with a melodic course), and not as cacophony. The future is what will distill from our era the cultural voices, and filter out the politicians of the tongue with the absolute mercilessness reserved for absolute indifference. We do not speak with our contemporaries, and will not participate in the shouting competition, because it's enough that we whisper - and the future will hear.

And what does giving up on the life of this world for the sake of the life of the world to come require? Faith. Faith in culture and faith in spirit, and above all - faith in learning. But on what is this faith based, in an era that believes only in matter? Every philosophical paradigm in history had its way of building a cultural spiritual world beyond the material world visible to the eye, that is, its own way of creating faith:


Therefore, the very development of culture is faith in it. And culture, for its part, is the belief that the future will hear. Even if in a way we cannot imagine, and which is sometimes ironic and cunning beyond measure. Just as the Pharaohs who so longed to defeat death actually managed to achieve eternal life, but not in the world of the dead - but in museums, as cultural creations. Or as Brenner the heretic received his "nevertheless" from the paradoxical Chabad thinking he received in cheder [Translator's note: traditional elementary school for Jewish children], and the pose and confessional prose and cruel self-flagellation and public from the Musar movement in which he grew up. Thus he founded the Mitnagdic [Translator's note: opponents of Hasidism] tradition within Hebrew literature (which opposes Hasidic stories), from which grew the continuation of the Mitnagdic spiritual world within the secular world (soul-searching, rebuke, rhetoric of authenticity, the soul's roar and the right to shout that becomes the duty to shout, the Musar movement of moral preaching, etc.). And now the dispute from 250 years ago returns, and the secular Mitnagdic left is horrified by the Hasidim of the right and their Rebbe (not to mention the court). Tyrants' pruner and flint knives! Therefore, we must fight today in our culture for the right to whisper. Brenner wrote - and the future didn't even read, but heard. If you have something to say to the future - you don't need to struggle. Just write to it. It is precisely the struggle of the people of the present that shows that they have nothing to whisper secretly to the ears of the future. They have no faith in their own future, and therefore they behave in the cultural market like merchants. Opinions by the kilo and intellectuals for a shekel, on the knife! Are you coming to Facebook? The mashgiach [Translator's note: spiritual supervisor in yeshivas] is now giving a moral lecture (so it's a moral obligation to like him).

But - if despite all this and "nevertheless" we return to the place from which we started, what will really become of "humanity"? What does culture have to offer to the average person? That is - (in our era the question is reversed!) what does the average person have to offer to culture? Is their role merely adoration and financial support? (Preferably not, because their evaluation mechanisms are completely flawed and therefore they corrupt culture when they come to help it). What does this text offer for the correction of "humanity" (the deaf, the foolish, who there is no illusion that they will hear anything)? The great trouble with sterile individualism itself is its own denial of the future dimension of its existence. Yes, you know you're not really talented, not at a level that will be remembered in the future, but because you are an individual in your self-perception you can't help but interfere with culture, make noise and express yourself (and how much noise is inside you! You probably think this is a guarantee of your value, contrary to the mental quiet and enormous concentration that true creation requires). But this need itself stems from a denial of your situation in the world, including the opportunities it offers, and in fact the great opportunity that was known and central to the world of every person until the individualistic era.

The Musar movement? Please. You are a crooked and foolish tree, which will never straighten, and you have only one opportunity in life to make a real fruit for culture: Einstein you will never be, but you can still be Einstein's father (who, miraculously, was also called Einstein!). The only future dimension of existence of the reasonable "human", in which he contributes to culture, is known as: Jewish parenting (yes, it's not just the mother, despite her public relations). This is the parenting whose entire purpose is to create a genius child who will contribute to culture much more than his parents are capable of, while giving up on their own self ("What I did for you!"). And the achievements of Jewish culture in the world - testify that it works. Jewish parenting was a cultural enterprise of the first order on a global level, and if there is any cultural loss to lament in our time, and hope for its return to its former glory, it is this parenting. And this is exactly the trouble with culture. All it demands is to wait a generation. This is an unbearable demand for the individual, but as an individual you are worth nothing, contrary to what they sold you. What can you do - culture's minimum requirement (a generation!) is always the maximum demand from the human.

To Part 1
Culture and Literature